60 replies to this topic

[LuvPow]

liftmech, on Jan 31 2009, 06:49 PM, said:

Therein lies most of the reason for the hysteria.

The"hysteria" is just corporate America and their marketing campaign's, it's the new thing to market and sell products with, thats why we hear so much about it.

[Andoman]

towertop, on Feb 1 2009, 03:50 PM, said:

Come on... we know plants use co2 for growth, so all you vegans eat MEAT! And stop killing our Earth.

Best argument against vegetarianism I've heard yet.

[Andoman]

aug, on Feb 1 2009, 02:55 PM, said:

Come on guys ... this topic has been raised before here and all of the same arguments are surfacing again. Let's look at the facts....
1). The climate on this planet has NEVER been static. That means the climate and the weather will change regardless of what we do or how much we talk about it .

2). "The Industrial Revolution" is responsible for the release of the stored carbon( stored solar energy) on our planet. It has always been there, it has just been stored underground. Us being such an inquisitive species have just released it before its time. (Fate?)

3). Population control is the only long term answer to this problem of releasing excess carbon into the atmosphere. How do you reduce the carbon footprint ? remove the feet ( no pun intended Emax)

4). The planet Earth is in no trouble here ...... just the earth as we know it.

Aug, the boards been a little slow so we just need something to argue about. We're all aspiring to be angry old men.

[aug]

Andoman, on Feb 1 2009, 02:37 PM, said:

Aug, the boards been a little slow so we just need something to argue about. We're all aspiring to be angry old men.

Thanks for the entertainment.

This post has been edited by aug: 01 February 2009 - 03:44 PM

[Emax]

"3). Population control is the only long term answer to this problem of releasing excess carbon into the atmosphere. How do you reduce the carbon footprint ? remove the feet ( no pun intended Emax)"

"Come on... we know plants use co2 for growth, so all you vegans eat MEAT! And stop killing our Earth."

No offense taken - just doin' my part.

Just a minute now - plant life inhales CO2 and exhales O2 - that's kinda' what we want. Animals and industry perform the opposite conversion.

This post has been edited by Emax: 01 February 2009 - 03:53 PM

[k2skier]

LiftTech, on Feb 1 2009, 08:37 AM, said:

http://www.iceagenow...ng_Glaciers.htm

Most are short term anomalies. If it continues for 30-40 more years then it could be considered a trend, the majority of ice on this planet is receding though. When our planet warms, some places will get colder, but we will get more weather extremes than ever before.

This planet has always had very dynamic and ever-changing weather, but it hasn't been "hot" since it was formed millions of years ago. Our planet has cycled from frozen to warm (as we know it now) many times (and has always had substantial polar ice). This isn't something (GW) we need to freak out about, but finding some other energy source than crude (and fossil fuels) only makes sustainable sense.

I think we could easily have an impact on our weather. CFC's are banned and the ozone hole gets smaller, coincidence?

The only debate on global warming, or better yet "climate change", is on why it's changing as fast as it is, not that we're actually getting warmer.

This post has been edited by k2skier: 02 February 2009 - 02:28 PM

[Andoman]

k2skier, on Feb 2 2009, 05:26 PM, said:

Most are short term anomalies. If it continues for 30-40 more years then it could be considered a trend, the majority of ice on this planet is receding though. When our planet warms, some places will get colder, but we will get more weather extremes than ever before.

This planet has always had very dynamic and ever-changing weather, but it hasn't been "hot" since it was formed millions of years ago. Our planet has cycled from frozen to warm (as we know it now) many times (and has always had substantial polar ice). This isn't something (GW) we need to freak out about, but finding some other energy source than crude (and fossil fuels) only makes sustainable sense.

I think we could easily have an impact on our weather. CFC's are banned and the ozone hole gets smaller, coincidence?

The only debate on global warming, or better yet "climate change", is on why it's changing as fast as it is, not that we're actually getting warmer.

The part that the "scientists" are skipping over but geological scientists/engineers understand is 50 to 100 years in people time is a very long time, however 50 to 100 years is geologic time is the equivalent of a millisecond. Sure you can make a trend line in statistical data as short as you want, I can sample 100 years, 1 year, 1 hour, or 1 second but how do I know which trend is correct? When you learn about statistics in high school or college the first thing they teach you is how easy it is to manipulate statistical data and results. The second thing is the longer you sample data the more likely it is correct (not necessarily correct but more likely to be correct) (remember to apply the people time versus geologic time thing here). An easy way of looking at it is flipping a coin, take 10 people give each a quarter and tell them to flip it twice and record the results. You brain can easily tell you the results should be 50% heads and 50% tails, however, with a small sampling interval you results will be skewed. The results will more than likely be skewed 70% one and 30% the other (if memory serves me right from my class experiments). If you tell those same people to each flip the coin 200 times your results will be within a few percent of 50 / 50. When you look at all of the climate sampling and data (especially the famous hockey stick chart) you'll notice how sparse the data is before say 1880ish (again working off memory) and that is because they used tree ring data from old petrified trees to interpolate the results and that is what started all the global warming a few old petrified trees found in one region of europe (I mention the few trees found in ONE region of the planet because it is statistically very important.) Needless to say if you apply the same knowledge to global warming and break it down it's like saying your bathroom always smells like crap because you went in right after someone took a crap. Might your bathroom always smell like crap? Possibly, but it might not. To end my ramble I'll add my professor's remarks to the end of our statistics class "never trust someone who makes a living interpreting statistical data, especially if you think they might have an agenda."

P.S> as much as you don't want to believe people dispute the getting warmer thing, some scientists really do but Al Gore doesn't fund their work because it doesn't help him or his agenda. Remember the words warm or hot are relative terms.

[aug]

Andoman, on Feb 2 2009, 03:59 PM, said:

The part that the "scientists" are skipping over but geological scientists/engineers understand is 50 to 100 years in people time is a very long time, however 50 to 100 years is geologic time is the equivalent of a millisecond. Sure you can make a trend line in statistical data as short as you want, I can sample 100 years, 1 year, 1 hour, or 1 second but how do I know which trend is correct? When you learn about statistics in high school or college the first thing they teach you is how easy it is to manipulate statistical data and results. The second thing is the longer you sample data the more likely it is correct (not necessarily correct but more likely to be correct) (remember to apply the people time versus geologic time thing here). An easy way of looking at it is flipping a coin, take 10 people give each a quarter and tell them to flip it twice and record the results. You brain can easily tell you the results should be 50% heads and 50% tails, however, with a small sampling interval you results will be skewed. The results will more than likely be skewed 70% one and 30% the other (if memory serves me right from my class experiments). If you tell those same people to each flip the coin 200 times your results will be within a few percent of 50 / 50. When you look at all of the climate sampling and data (especially the famous hockey stick chart) you'll notice how sparse the data is before say 1880ish (again working off memory) and that is because they used tree ring data from old petrified trees to interpolate the results and that is what started all the global warming a few old petrified trees found in one region of europe (I mention the few trees found in ONE region of the planet because it is statistically very important.) Needless to say if you apply the same knowledge to global warming and break it down it's like saying your bathroom always smells like crap because you went in right after someone took a crap. Might your bathroom always smell like crap? Possibly, but it might not. To end my ramble I'll add my professor's remarks to the end of our statistics class "never trust someone who makes a living interpreting statistical data, especially if you think they might have an agenda."

P.S> as much as you don't want to believe people dispute the getting warmer thing, some scientists really do but Al Gore doesn't fund their work because it doesn't help him or his agenda. Remember the words warm or hot are relative terms.

Ya! What he said!

[k2skier]

I do study and search both sides of this topic, and when you look at who says the planet is warming faster than ever before in recent history and who is trying to disprove it...well the majority of respectable scientists all come to the same occlusion. And if you think they all have an (personal) agenda, well I'm glad those who are trying to disprove climate change are in the minority.

It's all about common sense and sustainability.

Whatever humans do to/on this planet it will continue on as it had for millions of years with or with out complex life aboard.

How fresh out of school are you Andoman?

[Andoman]

k2skier, on Feb 3 2009, 01:06 PM, said:

I do study and search both sides of this topic, and when you look at who says the planet is warming faster than ever before in recent history and who is trying to disprove it...well the majority of respectable scientists all come to the same occlusion. And if you think they all have an (personal) agenda, well I'm glad those who are trying to disprove climate change are in the minority.

It's all about common sense and sustainability.

Whatever humans do to/on this planet it will continue on as it had for millions of years with or with out complex life aboard.

How fresh out of school are you Andoman?

Sorry about the last post, me and the captain's private stock had a date.

What is common sense about it? If everyone in the world gets a pay check from someone telling them to study only global warming then yes most scientist (who have to make a living too) will tell you whatever the person that cut the check told them too. But, yes some things are very common sense i.e. hunting whale blubber for lamp oil, very common sense in that it can't be sustained. Stop using oil (which there is currently plenty of) and switch to what? There isn't enough efficentcy in solar or wind to generate the current levels of energy we currently use. Nuclear is bad according to Obama so that's out. It takes 10x the electricity to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen in water that it takes to produce it or you have to distill hydrogen from oil (back to the sustainability thing again). The hippies don't want us daming up rivers anymore so there goes the hydro idea. You tell me what to do, I don't want to burn down the rain forest, however, I'm not going to cut the electrical line to my house ether. On the sustainability front fine your right we will eventually run out of oil, but again what do you suggest as an alternative? I will be 110% behind switching the source we use for energy as soon as a VIABLE source presents itself. But currently the only material that has the energy density of petroleum is nuclear material. I'm not going to just off the oil boat in the middle of the ocean without the knowledge that another boat is there to pick me up.

How fresh out of the garage (yes I know your a mechanic) are you k2 to look and see how many vehicles you're truly thinking about replacing? Think of all the new materials that you would need to replace every single car on the road, how environmentally friendly is that? I've been out of college long enough to know that isn't viable and money doesn't grow on trees to pay for such things.

This post has been edited by Andoman: 03 February 2009 - 02:09 PM

[zeedotcom]

Two brief points:

1. The CO2 levels from burning things like ethanol are sort of irrelevant. All of the CO2 produced when burning these was recently removed from the atmosphere. Oil is composed of carbon that has been "stored' for a long time. In any time frame that isn't instantaneous, you basically have a negligible impact on carbon levels by using biofuels. Not so say that it isn't "burning food" but that isn't the root of this discussion.

2. Some form of nuclear is really about the only option to replace fossil fuels. Even bio fuels are barely efficient when you factor in the energy that goes into making them. Nuclear FUSION is the "holy grail." If a manageable process is discovered for cold fusion, the cost of electricity will essentially drop to the cost of transmission because of the massive amount of energy that can be released in this manner. At that point, you could almost literally engineer oil from CO2 with minimal pollution (the byproduct of fusion is Helium). I'm sure that there is much more, but right now, it isn't on the horizon and it has been a while since I did much reading on this particular subject. It could conceivably happen much faster with a huge Manhattan Project style research initiative, but that requires political will.

[aug]

"Artificial fusion in human enterprises has also been achieved, although not yet completely controlled." sounds like most human enterprises

This post has been edited by aug: 03 February 2009 - 10:36 PM

[Andoman]

zeedotcom, on Feb 3 2009, 11:02 PM, said:

Two brief points:

1. The CO2 levels from burning things like ethanol are sort of irrelevant. All of the CO2 produced when burning these was recently removed from the atmosphere. Oil is composed of carbon that has been "stored' for a long time. In any time frame that isn't instantaneous, you basically have a negligible impact on carbon levels by using biofuels. Not so say that it isn't "burning food" but that isn't the root of this discussion.

2. Some form of nuclear is really about the only option to replace fossil fuels. Even bio fuels are barely efficient when you factor in the energy that goes into making them. Nuclear FUSION is the "holy grail." If a manageable process is discovered for cold fusion, the cost of electricity will essentially drop to the cost of transmission because of the massive amount of energy that can be released in this manner. At that point, you could almost literally engineer oil from CO2 with minimal pollution (the byproduct of fusion is Helium). I'm sure that there is much more, but right now, it isn't on the horizon and it has been a while since I did much reading on this particular subject. It could conceivably happen much faster with a huge Manhattan Project style research initiative, but that requires political will.

Burning food does come into play here in the sustainability portion of the argument, but otherwise I completely agree. Please don't take what I said as I don't believe in nuclear energy, because I completely do, however, the current administration has made it clear they won't support nuclear energy. But, the great thing about new nuclear technology would be the ability to create hydrogen through electrolysis and have it be cost effective. My whole point of my argument is waiting for an efficient technology to jump to, because if you jump off the boat to early you will most certainly drown.

[k2skier]

Andoman, on Feb 4 2009, 04:39 AM, said:

Burning food does come into play here in the sustainability portion of the argument, but otherwise I completely agree. Please don't take what I said as I don't believe in nuclear energy, because I completely do, however, the current administration has made it clear they won't support nuclear energy. But, the great thing about new nuclear technology would be the ability to create hydrogen through electrolysis and have it be cost effective. My whole point of my argument is waiting for an efficient technology to jump to, because if you jump off the boat to early you will most certainly drown.

We lost our moral compass when we started growing food to feed our cars (not a push from the greenies, it was big oil, so we can keep on burning gas!). My tow rig, 12mpg, only drove 1410 miles last year (tax time!). And our other 2 cars are a 95 and 05 Subaru (one of only 2 car companies that showed a profit for 2008!) that get 25 and 28mpg respectively. I keep an auto for approx 15-20 years as not to add to waste. In 2008 I cut my gas consumption by close to 40%. I repair boats and lawn & garden equipment, and with ethanol fuels now, it has helped my business by ruining carburetors and pulling moisture into the fuel systems.

My site a basic lame site on Verizon. http://mysite.verizon.net/bizzm23z/


But if we don't start searching for alternatives now then what will happen when crude becomes scarce or goes over $150 (and up!) a barrel which it will eventually?

We have a huge fission rector in the sky for our use, we just need the technology to capture it, but big oil keeps fighting any changes. Now that our big oil president is gone, maybe we can make some progress on alternative energy. Something like this.

Concentrating Solar Power
http://www.solarpaces.org/

This post has been edited by k2skier: 04 February 2009 - 11:50 AM

[Andoman]

k2skier, on Feb 4 2009, 02:45 PM, said:

We lost our moral compass when we started growing food to feed our cars (not a push from the greenies, it was big oil, so we can keep on burning gas!). My tow rig, 12mpg, only drove 1410 miles last year (tax time!). And our other 2 cars are a 95 and 05 Subaru (one of only 2 car companies that showed a profit for 2008!) that get 25 and 28mpg respectively. I keep an auto for approx 15-20 years as not to add to waste. In 2008 I cut my gas consumption by close to 40%. I repair boats and lawn & garden equipment, and with ethanol fuels now, it has helped my business by ruining carburetors and pulling moisture into the fuel systems.

My site a basic lame site on Verizon. http://mysite.verizon.net/bizzm23z/


But if we don't start searching for alternatives now then what will happen when crude becomes scarce or goes over $150 (and up!) a barrel which it will eventually?

We have a huge fission rector in the sky for our use, we just need the technology to capture it, but big oil keeps fighting any changes. Now that our big oil president is gone, maybe we can make some progress on alternative energy. Something like this.

Concentrating Solar Power
http://www.solarpaces.org/

Ethonal was a push by the greenies as a fuel stabilizer during the summer months (to replace mde(??) as an oxidizer), and after the farmers got a taste of the money the farmers pushed it the rest of the way. Really, all I'm saying is the government, or private investors need to invest to better develop these technologies before trying to talk people into jumping ship. The current alternatives are not efficient enough to support the residential or industrial markets at this point, and by no means am I saying they won't be better in 10 years, but to try to just use wind and solar now would be suicide. As for the cars, I live in michigan and I've owned a few different cars but my two favorites of all time are the subaru I had in college and my jeep wrangler I had in high school. Right now my wife drives a 2000 dodge interpid (fullest of the full size cars at the time, as tony soprano would say "you could put a lot of bodies in that trunk") and it averages 28 mpg and I'm taking delivery of a Ford XFE F150 that will get close to 20 mpg.

[Emax]

"We have a huge fission rector in the sky for our use, we just need the technology to capture it, but big oil keeps fighting any changes."

You refer to the star we call our sun, I assume. Fission / fusion, if you please - Helium to hydrogen / hydrogen to helium. The fusion is really where it's at.

I want to see financial concentration on earth-bound fusion: huge output, very little waste product (if any). In previous posts, I have suggested that this take place somewhere where there are no people - where no one wants to be - some place like Antarctica. Fusion-to-electric / electric-to-electrolysis of seawater / use the hydrogen, release the oxygen to the atmosphere. This will happen.

BTW - the ethanol fuel solution is absurd.

This post has been edited by Emax: 04 February 2009 - 07:42 PM

[mikest2]

Biofuels should remain as Whiskeys, Wines and Beer. Solar, Fission, Fusion, and Petroleum cocktails will never cut it.

[Andoman]

mikest2, on Feb 5 2009, 12:04 AM, said:

Biofuels should remain as Whiskeys, Wines and Beer. Solar, Fission, Fusion, and Petroleum cocktails will never cut it.

Mmmmm......radiated rum & coke

[aug]

mikest2, on Feb 4 2009, 09:04 PM, said:

Solar, Fission, Fusion, and Petroleum cocktails will never cut it.

I'll try anything once, twice if I like it.

[Emax]

aug, on Feb 5 2009, 09:34 AM, said:

I'll try anything once, twice if I like it.

So - two kids, huh?